MSN Messenger, 2017

“It’s not catching on, I even dropped the price to $0.99. It’s free for prime members. This is dead, a waste of my time,” wrote Alain on his cell phone text system.

“I took a quick look, it’s filled with hard core science. It does not read like a story,” typed Tim over the cell phone app. “I know you don’t want to change any part of them, but six pages from Liam on causes and consequences. Any chance you could trim it down?”

“I guess, but it feels weird.”

“Maybe I can rock this story,” typed the troubled soul. Alain’s former law school had been broken in every sense of the word. The patent attorney had moved continents and found success at every turn of his life, Tim was the reverse. The man had fallen in love and gotten hurt each time, his addictive personality walked him to a gastric bypass only for his legal practice to vanish to OxyContin. After years of abuse of his body, he was barely alive, playing video games in the basement of his poor parents. But at times, between periods of abuse, his mind remained sharp. After years typing online, they had become besties. Alain never judged him for falling to the addiction but told him the keyboard distance was healthy. Truth be told, Tim would die taking a bullet for someone, he just had to find who.

“This story is massive. I have some vision of how far it goes. Book one happens eight rounds to the end, in time a month off and I wrote three hundred pages that just describe Sophie’s travel and first day. This will never end.”

“Well, add stuff before she takes the plane, a couple of rounds.”

“Those I would have to make up. My visions start with her, Yes, forgot, there is Ronaldo getting vaporized.”

“Was meaning to talk about this. People read him, like him and you vaporize him. We are two book in and he has not returned.”

“I know. I am wasting my time. You know what?”

“Go on?”

“In my life, I often walk up a road trusting where it goes. This is one of them. I feel it.”

“Well, that guy on Amazon was right, it’s full of errors I could fix for you.” Alain had purchased marketing for his first book, a hundred poor souls read parts of it. One review read the story was interesting but they all agreed, this needed serious editing. “What else do I have to do? I can edit this. What other option do you have?”

“You promise not to make fun of me,” confined the failing author.

“Of course.”

“I feel like I must write this and it won’t sell but that’s fine somehow. I also feel like something is helping me. I now need an editor, I think this is not a coincidence you are offering.”

“Dude, things always go your way. Might keep me alive a while longer to have something to do. One day, if this works, I will be able to buy all the Oxy in the world.”

“No. This will never be a success, it’s just not that type of story. The main character is a fucking anti-hero. No one will even connect, she is twelve. Twelve year olds don’t read Sci-Fi. Dead on arrival but I must write it, I just have. I don’t need the money, I have nothing to prove. I can promise you 10% but of zero that is not much.”

Other the next years began the strangest of collaborations. Over the computer, the pair began to talk regularly like an old couple in therapy. Often, Tim’s addictive personality would send him back to drugs or alcohol half way to rehab. This wasn’t professional work, but it would have to do. No one, even in Alain’s close friends read more than a handful of page. Some, because he had included their names, finished a small portion only to abandon the complex story in silence. By 2015, few still read and even fewer tried new authors. No serious publishing company would take this on. It would be self-published.

***

As the chapters and words fell on the pages, music remained was at the center of the authorship. Alain always found inspiration with his favorite singers and sure enough they made their way into the long pages. This story was alive but he still wrote it. The same was true with names and large portions of the story. Half the images could not be artfully written down, he was no author able to describe landscapes and worlds. The images were always perfect, but they rarely told the full story, so he had to improvise. His friend Susie would see herself become the doctor.

The song My Way by Frank Sinatra was his favorite, it was featured in full in book five. Alain also loved several important physicists, Neil and Carl Sagan shared a stage just for him. At some point, Alain even began to use locations of his choice. He loved the Mont St Michel in France so he enjoyed staging things there. Strangely the authorship was very difficult at time. He was also gay, so he sprinkled some of that everywhere. This was his baby, his decade.

Often, inspired by his favorite music, the attorney took the creative lead and wrote full chapters only to delete them in frustration the next week.

“Dude,” texted the author to his pen pal, “I just dumped five thousands words in the trash.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“It was great but it does not belong there somehow.”

“You are the boss,” joked Tim.

“Nah, it’s nuts, the portions were there to help and make this simpler. It was playing Round 27 in the Hotel, dumped. It’s like the book won’t let me simplify it. This META stuff, it does not belong there, giant waste of time.”

“You kept it somewhere I hope,” Tim typed.

“No. That’s stupid, right? But shit I think is beyond stupid is in, I added a Pokémon game, it’s cute but WTF?”

“Pokémon?”

“Yep. I am not controlling this. It’s like someone else is writing. But in 2072, why Pokémon and not something else.”

“Stop selling yourself short. You are the most brilliant man I know. This is solid, we will fix it later.”

“This story makes no sense, none. It moves around, has no lasers or fighting the normal readers want. No one gets quantum physics, this a waste of our time.”

He was right, but the odd couple continued.

***

“Yo, Dude?” Typed the author another day.

“What is now?”

“I can’t write this.”

“What, Why?”

“Don’t laugh?”

“I am the one who shit his pants twice this week.”

“I can’t write any of this anymore without balling like a kid. I can’t go to type in public, people think I am crazy even at my normal spots.”

“A good cry is good once in a while.”

“It’s draining me, work is hard, this is getting to be much.”

“Luck still there?”

“Of course.”

“Then keep going.”

***

“The ending is coming in. Fuck.”

“Why?”

“I am not sure we will like this,” confined the Canadian several years later to his makeshift editor.

“This shit is the only reason I am alive, hit me!”

“You and I are in it. I know, that makes no sense.”

“Don’t talk about my problem with Oxy, right?”

“I have to. I don’t edit this stuff anymore. I don’t care, I am just the first reader. It’s like a pregnancy, I need it done, like yesterday. This will be nuts, the ending is beyond strange.”

“We both expected complex.”

“It’s not like that. I have several endings. This will not be Lord of the Rings. That was a downer of an ending. Dump ring, win. Giant falcons. This will be weird.”

“Dude, do what you must, I trust you at this point, I will just try to stay alive.”